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Khmer language

Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ), or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language, with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through the vehicles of Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon-Khmer family, predating Mon and by a significant margin Vietnamese. As a result of geographic proximity, the Khmer language has affected, and also been affected by, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Cham which all form a sprachbund in peninsular Southeast Asia.

Khmer has its own script, an abugida known in Khmer as Aksar Khmer.

Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Thai, Lao and Vietnamese in that it is not a tonal language. All its main dialects that are mutually intelligible:

Battambang, spoken in northern Cambodia.
Phnom Penh, the capital dialect and is also spoken in surrounding provinces.
Northern Khmer, also known as Khmer Surin, spoken by ethnic Khmer native to Northeast Thailand
Khmer Krom or Southern Khmer, spoken by the indigenous Khmer population of the Mekong Delta.
Cardamom Khmer, an archaic form spoken by a small population in the Cardamom Mountains of western Cambodia.

History

Linguistic study of the Khmer language divides its history into four periods. Pre-Angkorian Khmer, the language after its divergence from Proto-Mon-Khmer until the ninth century, is only known from words and phrases in Sanskrit texts of the era. Old Khmer (or Angkorian Khmer) is the language as it was spoken in the Khmer Empire from the 9th century until the weakening of the empire sometime in the 13th century. Old Khmer is attested by many primary sources and has been studied in depth by a few scholars, most notably Saveros Pou, Phillip Jenner and Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow. Following the end of the Khmer Empire the language lost the standardizing influence of being the language of government and accordingly underwent a turbulent period of change in morphology, phonology and lexicon. The language of this transition period, from about the 14th to 18th centuries, is referred to as Middle Khmer and saw borrowing from Thai, Lao and, to a lesser extent, Vietnamese. The changes during this period are so profound that the rules of Modern Khmer can not be applied to correctly understand the Old Khmer. The language became recognizable as the Modern Khmer spoken today in the 19th century.

Khmer is classified as a member of the Eastern branch of the Mon-Khmer language family, itself a subdivision of the larger Austro-Asiatic language group, which has representatives in a large swath of land from Northeast India down through Southeast Asia to the Malay Peninsula and its islands. As such, its closest relatives are the languages of the Pearic, Bahnaric, and Katuic families spoken by the hill tribes of the region. The Vietic languages have also been classified as belonging to this family.

Phonology

As described by Huffman, modern standard Khmer has the following consonant and vowel phonemes. The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds of the spoken language, not how they are written in the Khmer alphabet.

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Aspirated plosive	pʰ	tʰ	cʰ	kʰ
Unaspirated plosive	p	t	c	k	ʔ
Implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Liquid		r l
Fricative		s			h
Approximant	ʋ		j

The consonants /f/, /ʃ/, /z/ and /ɡ/ may occasionally occur in foreign words from, for example, French and other recent introductions. These consonants do not appear in the chart above because they are not Khmer consonants per se and the sounds do not occur in any Khmer words. These non-native sounds are only heard by speakers familiar with the originating language and have no corresponding symbol in the Khmer script, although combinations of letters otherwise unpronounceable are used to represent these sounds when necessary. In the speech of those who are not bilingual, these sounds are approximated with natively occurring phonemes:

Foreign Sound (IPA)	Khmer Representation	Khmer Approximation (IPA)
/ɡ/	ហ្គ	/k/
/ʃ/	ហ្ស	/s/
/f/	ហ្វ	/h/ or /pʰ/
/z/	ហ្ស	/s/

Vowel nuclei

Long vowels	iː	eː	ɛː	ɨː	əː		aː	uː	oː	ɔː
Short vowels	i	e		ɨ	ə	ɐ	a	u	o
Long diphthongs	iə	ei	ɐe	ɨə	əɨ	ɐə	ao	uə	ou	ɔə
Short diphthongs		eə̆						uə̆	oə̆

The precise number and the phonetic value of vowel nuclei vary from dialect to dialect. Short and long vowels of equal quality are distinguished solely by duration.

Syllable structure

Khmer words are predominantly of one or two syllables. There are 85 possible clusters of two consonants at the beginning of syllables and two three-consonant clusters with phonetic alterations as shown below:

	p	ɓ	t	ɗ	c	k	ʔ	m	n	ɲ	ŋ	j	l	r	s	h	ʋ
p			pʰt-	pɗ-	pʰc	pʰk-	pʔ-		pʰn-	pʰɲ-	pʰŋ-	pʰj-	pʰl-	pr-	ps-
t	tʰp-	tɓ				tʰk-	tʔ-	tʰm-	tʰn-		tʰŋ-	tʰj-	tʰl-	tr-			tʰʋ
c	cʰp-	cɓ				cʰk-	cʔ-	cʰm-	cʰn-		cʰŋ-		cʰl-	cr-			cʰʋ-
k	kʰp-	kɓ	kʰt-	kɗ-	kʰc		kʔ-	kʰm-	kʰn-	kʰɲ-	kŋ-	kʰj-	kʰl-	kr-	ks-		kʰʋ-
s	sp-	sɓ	st-	sɗ-		sk-	sʔ-	sm-	sn-	sɲ-	sŋ-		sl-	sr-			sʋ
ʔ																	ʔʋ-
m			mt-	mɗ-	mc		mʔ-		mʰn-	mʰɲ-			ml-	mr-	ms-	mh-
l	lp-	lɓ				lk-	lʔ-	lm-			lŋ-					lh-	lʋ-

Syllables begin with one of these consonants or consonant clusters, followed by one of the vowel nuclei. When the vowel nucleus is short, there has to be a final consonant. can exist in a syllable coda. /h/ and /ʋ/ become [ç] and [w] respectively. The most common word structure in Khmer is a full syllable as described above, preceded by an unstressed, “minor” syllable that has a consonant-vowel (CV) structure CV-, CrV-, CVN- or CrVN- (N is any nasal in the Khmer inventory). Words can also be made up of two full syllables. The vowel in these preceding syllables is usually reduced in conversation to [ə], however in careful or formal speech and in TV and radio, they are always clearly articulated.

Words with three or more syllables exist, particularly those pertaining to science, the arts, and religion. These words are loanwords, usually derived from Pali, Sanskrit, or more recently, French.

Grammar

Khmer is generally a Subject Verb Object (SVO) language with prepositions. Although primarily an isolating language, lexical derivation by means of prefixes and infixes is common. Adjectives, demonstratives and numerals follow their noun:

ស្រីស្អាតនោះ /srəj sʔaːt nuh/ (girl pretty that) = that pretty girl

The noun has no grammatical gender or singular/plural distinction. Plurality can be marked by postnominal particles, numerals, or by doubling the adjective, which can also serve to intensify the adjective:

ឆ្កែធំ /cʰkae tʰom/ (dog large) = large dog

ឆ្កែធំណាស់ /cʰkae tʰom nass/ (dog large very) = large dogs or a very large dog

ឆ្កែពីរ /cʰkae piː/ (dog two) = two dogs

Classifying particles for use between numerals and nouns exist although are not obligatory as in, for example, Thai. As is typical of most East Asian languages, the verb does not inflect at all; tense and aspect can be shown by particles and adverbs or understood by context. Verbs are negated by putting "/min/", "/pum/" or "/ʔɐt/" before them and "/teː/" at the end of the sentence or clause.

ខ្ញុំជឿ /kʰɲom cɨə/ - I believe

ខ្ញុំមិនជឿទេ /kʰɲom min cɨə teː/ - I don't believe

Dialects

Dialects are sometimes quite marked. Notable variations are found in speakers from Phnom Penh (the capital city), the rural Battambang area, the areas of Northeast Thailand adjacent to Cambodia such as Surin province, the Cardamom Mountains, and in southern Vietnam. The dialects form a continuum running roughly north to south. The speech of Phnom Penh, considered the standard, is mutually intelligible with the others but a Khmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native to Sisaket Province in Thailand.

Northern Khmer, the dialect spoken in Thailand, is referred to in Khmer as Khmer Surin and, although it only began divergence from standard Khmer within the last 200 years, is considered by some linguists to be a separate language. This is due to its distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal language, Thai, lexical differences and its phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Final "r", which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is pronounced in Northern Khmer.

Western Khmer, also called Cardamom Khmer, spoken by a small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from Cambodia into Thailand, although little studied, is unique in that it maintains a definite system of vocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer.

A notable characteristic of Phnom Penh casual speech is merging or complete elision of syllables, considered by speakers from other regions as a "relaxed" pronunciation. For instance, "Phnom Penh" will sometimes be shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of Phnom Penh speech is observed in words with an "r" either as an initial consonant or as the second member of a consonant cluster (as in the English word "bread"). The "r", trilled or flapped in other dialects, is either pronounced as an uvular trill (similar to French) or not pronounced at all. This alters the quality of any preceding consonant causing a harder, more emphasized pronunciation. Another unique result is that the syllable is spoken with a low-rising or "dipping" tone much like the "hỏi" tone in Northern Vietnamese. For example, some people pronounce /trəj/ (meaning "fish") as /təj/, the "r" is dropped and the vowel begins by dipping much lower in tone than standard speech and then rises, effectively doubling its length. Another example is the word /riən/ ("study, learn"). It is pronounced /ʀiən/, with the "uvular r" and the same intonation described above.

Social registers

Khmer employs a system of registers in which the speaker must always be conscious of the social status of the person spoken to. The different registers, which include those used for common speech, polite speech, speaking to or about royals and speaking to or about monks, employ alternate verbs, names of body parts and pronouns. This results in what appears to foreigners as separate languages and, in fact, isolated villagers often are unsure how to speak with royals and royals raised completely within the court do not feel comfortable speaking the common register. Another result is that the pronominal system is complex and full of honorific variations.

As an example, the word for "to eat" used between intimates or in reference to animals is /siː/. Used in polite reference to commoners, it's /ɲam/. When used of those of higher social status, it's /pisa/ or . For monks the word is /cʰan/ and for royals, /saoj/.

Writing system

Khmer is written with the Khmer script, an abugida developed from the Pallava script of India before the 7th century. The Khmer script is similar in appearance and usage to both Thai and Lao which were based on the Khmer system. Khmer numerals, which were inherited from Indian numerals, are used more widely than Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Khmer script is also used within Cambodia to transcribe hill tribe languages that have no writing system.

Numbers

The numbers are:

0	០	សូន្យ	(son)	/soːu̯n/
1	១	មួយ	(muŏy)	/muːə̯j/
2	២	ពីរ	(pi)	/piː/
3	៣	បី	(bei)	/ɓəj/
4	៤	បួន	(buŏn)	/ɓuːə̯n/
5	៥	ប្រាំ	(prăm)	/pram/
6	៦	ប្រាំមូយ	(prăm muŏy)
7	៧	ប្រាំពីរ	(prăm pi)	(also )
8	៨	ប្រាំបី	(prăm bei)
9	៩	ប្រាំបួន	(prăm buŏn)
10	១០	ដប់	(dâp)	/ɗɑp/
100	១០០	មួយរយ	(muŏy rôy)
1,000	១០០០	មួយពាន់	(muŏy péan)
10,000	១០០០០	មួយម៉ឺន	(muŏy mein)
100,000	១០០០០០	មួយសែន	(muŏy sên)
1,000,000	១០០០០០០	មួយលាន	(muŏy léan)